Fuel economy

[foober]

i don't understand why some folks are getting just 30 miles to the gallon. I'm still getting around 38+ miles to the gallon at 8,000 miles. Only thing I do possibly different is I don't do jack rabbit starts. And ease into gaining speed.

[blacksan]

Originally Posted by foober

i don't understand why some folks are getting just 30 miles to the gallon. I'm still getting around 38+ miles to the gallon at 8,000 miles. Only thing I do possibly different is I don't do jack rabbit starts. And ease into gaining speed.

If you closely watch people drive it is easy to see wasteful habits like you mentioned. I went on a trip with a friend recently and we drove her Subaru which gets pretty good fuel mileage, but she does just about everything wrong including hard acceleration between stop lights and constantly fluctuating speeds (fast/slow/fast/slow) on the interstate. I drove it with a mild approach to acceleration and steady speeds on the interstate. She was puzzled why I had obtained the best mileage the car had ever experienced when she couldn't even get close.

[fmicle]

Can never emphasize enough: it's not the car, it's the DRIVER! :-)

My previous car was a Jeep Cherokee, EPA rating 16/21 mpg. One trip, 2 years ago, I got 28 mpg, driving over 500 miles on one tank of gas!

But still, the car poses some limitations of course, there is only so much the driver can do ;-)

[churp]

Originally Posted by fmicle

Can never emphasize enough: it's not the car, it's the DRIVER! :-)

...... ;-)

Ya, I agree....after getting just below 35mpg avg for the 1st 4,300 miles, I drove a little better (still ocassionally I'm at 70 tho) and the last 3,000 miles avg better than 39mpg and have gotten 42 on a couple tanks (anytime it hits half a tank I fill up cause I hate paying too much at once and I usually need an Icee)